copyrighted public domain books

[Pjama]

The author Antonia Fraser also does this - she includes masses of real facts in her historical books and one bogus one. So I will never read her books, as I would always be wondering, is this true, or not?

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

That was probably just an error. Map makers add extra wiggles to otherwise straight roads, or a smal cul-de-sac that doesn't exist. They don't (intentionally!) add non-existent connecting roads.

Not sure what kind of glitch it was in Google Maps but near me, there is a short stub of street which ends in a pedestrian bridge joining to another short stub on the other side with the same street name. Google Maps showed this as if you could drive from one side to the other.

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Copyright requires originality. Editorial changes (e.g. regularising/modernising spelling, fixing obvious typos) don't count. Project Gutenberg is that cautious because they're operating under US laws, so a later edition with corrections by the author might still be in copyright, but the earlier published work might be out of copyright. (Because of the way that copyright in the US depends on publication date for works published before 1978.)

You don't get a new copyright on a book's text just by republishing it.

Glad you posted. I was having trouble believing that I could take someone's PD book, move around a few sentences and then, add a couple words and have the right to copyright this as a "new" work.

Unless I'm wrong (and I'm wrong often) I think what can be copyrighted when republishing a book in the public domain, is any additional material the publisher adds, like a new introduction, or new insights on the author's life, etc. – something original. I think I've also seen the layout (fonts, margins, etc.) copyrighted – which wouldn't mean much in an ePub or Mobi eBook.

[hobnail]

Originally Posted by rcentros

Glad you posted. I was having trouble believing that I could take someone's PD book, move around a few sentences and then, add a couple words and have the right to copyright this as a "new" work.

Unless I'm wrong (and I'm wrong often) I think what can be copyrighted when republishing a book in the public domain, is any additional material the publisher adds, like a new introduction, or new insights on the author's life, etc. – something original. I think I've also seen the layout (fonts, margins, etc.) copyrighted – which wouldn't mean much in an ePub or Mobi eBook.

There's also something called a collection copyright, where they collect a bunch of books or short stories and publish that collection. I can see that if it's a bunch of books or stories by different authors but if they're all already available from Gutenberg or Internet Archive then I don't see it.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by rcentros

I think I've also seen the layout (fonts, margins, etc.) copyrighted – which wouldn't mean much in an ePub or Mobi eBook.

This is called Copyright in Typographical Arrangement and varies from country to country. In the UK a printed book has a 25-year typographic copyright.

[Quoth]

Yes, even the King James Bible you'd buy today is copyright due to the layout. Copyright free versions are either scans of older versions or reprints of Matthew Henry, or OCR. Because the actual text content is not copyright.

This is why reprints are often reset, perhaps have new illustrations etc and almost never simply facsimile reprints of an edition now in the public domain. Sadly it's also why they rarely put older works back into print (copyright or not) because the setup costs are about the same as new publication. So they rarely adopt POD except for high value academic/technical works. The big publishers are a little "broken" and actually giving away market to Amazon and some independents. The only "electronic" format that much interests them is Audio books because the entry barrier is higher for the self-published or small independent compared to eBooks and also because it's got over 20% growth (due to commuting, jogging, gyms, cycling). The cost for a Traditional Publisher isn't much different, with lower final publishing, storage and distribution costs than paper. Also they don't mind Amazon's Audible dominating it because regular bookshops traditionally didn't do audio books. It's great for partially sighted and blind as traditionally few titles were on disc, cassette and CD. They used to have special tape cartridges produced by the charities for the blind that were operated on a kind of library basis.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Yes, even the King James Bible you'd buy today is copyright due to the layout. Copyright free versions are either scans of older versions or reprints of Matthew Henry, or OCR. Because the actual text content is not copyright.

In the UK the King James Bible text has Crown copyright, which does not expire. The copyright is administered by Cambridge University.

Outside the UK, the text is in the public domain.

[Dr. Drib]

As an example from ONE of Forrest Reid's books, his "Uncle Stephen" is copyright by the Estate of Forrest Reid, and reprinted by permission of the Queen's University Belfast. (The Introduction, as mentioned and alluded to in many of the previous posts is a separate copyright; and it is copyright by the author, Andrew Doyle [Publisher: Valancourt].)

You may wish to do some additional checking on this author before committing to Mobileread.

[pdurrant]

Forrest Reid died in 1947. He books were, therefore, still in copyright in the EU until 1st January 2018. Unless your book is a very recent edition, that would explain the copyright notice.

Any of his works are welcome in the MobileRead library, so long as they don't include any in-copyright introduction or other notes.

[hobnail]

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

As an example from ONE of Forrest Reid's books, his "Uncle Stephen" is copyright by the Estate of Forrest Reid, and reprinted by permission of the Queen's University Belfast. (The Introduction, as mentioned and alluded to in many of the previous posts is a separate copyright; and it is copyright by the author, Andrew Doyle [Publisher: Valancourt].)

Are you sure it's the body of the book that's copyrighted? On the copyright page it says "Previously unpublished materials are copyright © 2014 by the Estate of Forrest Reid"

Uncle Stephen by Forrest Reid
First published London: Faber & Faber, 1931
First Valancourt Books edition 2014
Copyright © 1931, 2014 by the Estate of Forrest Reid
Introduction © 2014 by Andrew Doyle
Previously unpublished materials are copyright © 2014 by the Estate of Forrest Reid and are reprinted here with the permission of Queen’s University Belfast.
Published by Valancourt Books, Richmond, Virginia
http://www.valancourtbooks.com
All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without prior written consent of the publisher, constitutes an infringement of the copyright law.
Cover by Henry Petrides

In the (new) Introduction by Andrew Doyle there is a scanned drawing by the author with the caption "‘Tom’s Family Tree’ (Special Collections, Queen’s University Belfast, MS44/3/15). The first page of a document penned by Reid’s friend Knox Cunningham outlining genealogical details about Tom and his family, dated 17th October 1942."

And naturally I wasn't going to include that introduction.

[Dr. Drib]

I'm uncertain what those previous 'unpublished materials' are, so I don't know. (It may be that ONLY the unpublished materials - the drawing by Reid, along with the Introduction - consists of new copyrighted materials.)

The Introduction, as you mention, is copyright by the author; and, further (as you state) it will not be used anyway.

[pdurrant]

Posthumously published works are tricky. It depends on the country.

In the USA, they have life+70 if published after 2002. So the same as works published during the author's lifetime.

In the UK, the copyright for previously unpublished works by Forrest Reid last until 1st January 2040, as he died before 1st January 1969.

Other countries will have different rules.

For uploading to MobileRead, you'd need to make sure that your copy didn't include any material that was only published after his death.